As Portland grows and changes, is there a sense of resentment from locals as new people come in and create their own vision of what they want from the city?
It’s not so much that. Really, any new resident has that sense where you go to a place and you want to shut the door behind you. People discover Portland in a certain way and resent what it becomes later. Everyone has this insecurity about Portland like, ‘when does it arrive?’ and that comes with growing pains ... Portland is a very curated city. Because of growth slowly, deliberately taking shape, people here have been able to make it what they want it to be. It’s almost like a “Greatest Hits” city. It’s a little weird, but I love it.
When creating content for Portlandia, do you and Fred need to be in Portland the whole time or does it benefit to step outside that and develop ideas in another city?
Fred and I do spend a couple weeks in Los Angeles putting the show together. It helps to leave Portland at times but it’s more beneficial when we’re all here and entrenched in our environment. We want to transcend what Portland is because there’s a version of it in every city. You want to give it a realness. Ironically, the more specific we are about Portland, the more it translates to a broader audience.
A bit of a great interview with Carrie Brownstein, of Sleater-Kinney and the show Portlandia.
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